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[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 5286 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

<DOC>

118th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 5286

 To prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the 
                 United States, and for other purposes.

_______________________________________________________________________

                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           September 25, 2024

 Mr. Sullivan introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
       referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL

 
 To prohibit certain exports of natural gas produced or refined in the 
                 United States, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds that--
            (1) natural gas that is produced or refined in the United 
        States should be exported from domestic terminals given the 
        economic and national security concerns associated with 
        exporting that natural gas from countries with corrupt 
        governments such as Mexico;
            (2) Mexico is ranked 126th out of 180 countries in the 2023 
        Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, with 
        corruption permeating political and economic segments of 
        society in Mexico;
            (3) according to the 2023 Investment Climate Statement of 
        the Department of State, ``Mexico's current executive 
        administration has eroded the autonomy and publicly questioned 
        the value of specific antitrust and energy regulators and has 
        proposed dissolving some of them to cut costs. Furthermore, 
        corruption continues to affect equal enforcement of some 
        regulations.'';
            (4) the corruption permeating Mexico is illustrated by the 
        significant fuel theft in Mexico, which is so rampant that--
                    (A) Roberto Diaz de Leon, the President of the 
                National Fuel Retailers Association in Mexico, referred 
                to fuel theft networks as main competitors of gas 
                station owners;
                    (B) according to Roberto Diaz de Leon, there were 
                at least 4 illegal fuel stations for every 1 of the 
                13,000 legal fuel stations in Mexico, as of 2020; and
                    (C) the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez 
                Obrador, has suggested that as much as \4/5\ of fuel 
                theft is orchestrated by elements of the Mexican state, 
                and fuel thieves depend on complicit politicians, 
                police, and insiders at state-controlled oil companies 
                to make fuel theft possible;
            (5) employees of the Mexican state-owned petroleum company, 
        Pemex, have reportedly been threatened, kidnapped, and tortured 
        by criminal cartels in Mexico to provide information on 
        pipelines;
            (6) Pemex has faced frequent allegations of corruption, 
        and, in 2018, Adrian Lajous Vargas, the former chief at Pemex, 
        stated that corruption was rampant and ``everywhere in all 
        areas and at all levels of the hierarchy'';
            (7) Mexico has centralized governmental power in its 
        executive branch, including through judicial reforms in 
        September 2024 that asserted political control over the 
        judiciary of Mexico by subjecting all judges to replacement 
        through elections that favor the ruling political party;
            (8) the politicization of the judicial branch in Mexico 
        imperils the principle of impartiality and casts doubt on 
        whether laws will be applied without favor, contracts will be 
        honored, and trade disputes will be fairly resolved;
            (9) Mexican judicial reforms are expected to result in 
        changes to regulatory agencies that are critical to upholding 
        labor, environmental, and trade standards enshrined under the 
        United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement;
            (10) Mexico has also been in violation of its energy 
        commitments under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement 
        through violations such as--
                    (A) granting Mexican state-owned energy companies 
                priority over private investors, including adopting 
                several measures to favor Pemex and the state-owned 
                electrical utility, the Comision Federal de 
                Electricidad, at the expense of foreign investors, the 
                United States, and Canada; and
                    (B) erecting new barriers to foreign trade and 
                investment; and
            (11) the export of natural gas that is produced or refined 
        in the United States and exported to terminals located in 
        Mexico--
                    (A) is not in the national interest of the United 
                States; and
                    (B) is a national security and trade concern to the 
                United States.

SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON EXPORTS OF NATURAL GAS.

    Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall export 
any natural gas produced or refined in the United States to a foreign 
country with the intent of further exporting that natural gas through a 
foreign LNG terminal (as defined in section 2 of the Natural Gas Act 
(15 U.S.C. 717a)).
                                 <all>
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